YA Fiction: Chapter 2

I walked down the wrong hallway on my way to my first class.

Twice.

My sense of direction always sucked.

When I found the right room, the second bell had just gone off and the teacher was standing by her desk. The sheet of paper in one hand and the pencil in the other told me she was taking attendance, so I knocked on the door frame once she finished her list. Her head came up at the sound, and her eyes were wide when they landed on me. "Yes? Can I help you?"

I lifted up the folder I'd been given. "I'm new here."

Nodding, she walked towards me, taking the paper with my class schedule from me. Her brown eyes darted back and forth while she looked at the paper, then looked back at me. "Well, it looks like you've found the right room."

"Finally."

She smiled and led me to her desk in the back corner of the classroom.

I felt everyone staring at me as I followed the teacher. It was like they could smell the fresh blood entering their world, wondering how it would taste, and if its owner could fight back.

I looked back at some of them, and they quickly turned away to whisper to a neighbour. One brunette kept staring, watching me with a dirty glare in her eyes and a smirk curving her lips.

Clearly, this girl was going to be trouble, or maybe just an evil bitch.

Kneeling in front of a small bookcase, the teacher pulled out some books, then turned back and handed them to me. "I'll give you the week to catch up and read, but I expect you to join in next week. Welcome to first period English." Her eyes drifted down to the paper still in her hand. "Samantha."

I cringed. What was it with adults and whole names? "It's Sam."

"Sam." She wrote my name on her class list, then paused, her eyes darting up to my face. "O'Reilly."

The room was so quiet, I thought I'd hear crickets chirping. Or the earthquake rumbling outside, waiting to swallow me whole.

Blushing, I nodded. "Yeah."

She gave me a smile that looked sympathetic and handed me back my schedule. "Welcome again, Sam. I'm Miss Cooper. There's an empty desk just over there."

"Thanks." I headed for the empty desk she pointed at and caught snatches of whispered conversations.

"Another O'Reilly? I wonder where they were hiding this one."

"How come she's new? They find her under a rock?"

Someone snickered. "Maybe they found your brain under the same rock, dude."

"She doesn't look like an O'Reilly."

I dropped my books, hard, on the desk. The loud bang filled the room, startling Miss Cooper enough that she dropped her whiteboard marker, but it stopped the whispers.

They were right. I didn't look like an O'Reilly, except for my eyes. I had my dad's eyes. Every other feature I got from Mom.

A Fletcher.

When I was 13, I read Romeo and Juliet. One night at dinner I started talking about how I thought the feud between the two families was stupid, that nothing like that ever really happened in real life.

Dad had looked at me for a little while, then told me about what it was like for he and Mom when they started dating. He said it was the same as it was in the play, only the families were a lot bigger. Instead of Montagues versus Capulets, it was O'Reillys, O'Connors, and Coopers against Fletchers, Corrigans, and Wards.

Instead of a little fight, Dad said it was more like a war when he and Mom said they were going to get married.

I asked him why didn't he and Mom split up with them being in a town that strict about who you can and can't date. With his heart in his eyes, he told me that if you really care about someone, maybe love them, it doesn't matter what their name is or where they come from.

And so there I was, an O'Reilly with a Fletcher's face. I was straddling a line no one dared cross, and finding a place on either side of it was going to be tricky, especially with my grandparents pulling me towards theirs.

Sliding into my seat, I set my bag on the ground and immediately started biting my nails. I wanted that earthquake to hit so I could avoid becoming the school's next spectacle.

Halfway through class, Miss Cooper asked everyone to read while she left to photocopy some papers. Once she was gone the whispers started up again, and I started flipping through one of the books I'd been given.

"So, you're Sam O'Reilly."

Looking up, I saw the brunette from before standing next to my desk and raised an eyebrow at the way she made 'O'Reilly' sound like garbage. "And?"

She sniffed the way rich girls with credit cards sniff, like I was a lower life form and she was suffering having to talk to me, and sneered at me. "You shouldn't have come back. You're going to ruin everything."

This was what Mom and the principal warned me about. I'd expected it, but not in the uptight bitchy tone she used. Inhaling deeply, I stood up and somehow kept myself from punching her square in her makeup-covered face. "If it makes you feel any better, I didn't want to move back here."

"So what? You're here now."

"Look, you can whine and moan all you want, but you're going to get yourself a smack in your precious nose job if you don't go away."

Someone snickered, and the girl glared at me, fire smouldering in her dark eyes. "You think because your name is O'Reilly you can tell me what to do, you stupid bi-"

"Okay, that's enough." The guy sitting in front of me took hold of the girl's shoulders and pulled her back, almost pushing her towards her desk. "Sit down, Morgan, before you do something Daddy won't forgive."

She inhaled, her chest moving enough that I noticed a few male gazes turn in her direction, but not the guy she was now arguing with. "But she started it, and-"

"You started it, Morgan. Don't go blaming her because you're being a bitch."

She glared at him, almost snarling, then went back to her desk for her things before stalking out of the room.

I sat down, tired of being the centre of attention, and started nibbling on my thumbnail.

"Did you get cut?"

Looking up, I saw the guy who'd been arguing with Morgan sitting backwards in the chair in front of me. Perfect. A good-looking guy.

And cripes, was he good-looking.

His dark brown hair kept falling into his face, covering part of it, no matter how many times he'd push it back out of the way. He had big brown eyes, the kind that teenage girls all over found cute and irresistible. I glanced around the room and noticed a few of the other girls staring at him like they wished he sat next to them.

His clothes looked normal enough, a black t-shirt with what I assumed was the name of a local band on the front under a plaid shirt and jeans with holes in the knees.

He looked normal. Still, there was something about this guy that bothered me, that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

Maybe it was the easy smile.

I blinked, trying to focus so I didn't stare at him. "What?"

His hair fell into his dark eyes, almost covering them, and this time he didn't bother to push it out of the way. "By her tongue."

I chuckled when I understood what he was talking about and shook my head, feeling my neck get warm. "Maybe she didn't sharpen it enough this morning to do any lasting damage."

"Maybe not." He looked at me for a moment, then stuck out his hand. "Jack Corrigan."

And there it was. Perfect.

Sighing, I shook his hand. "Sam. So, is she always like that?"

"Unfortunately. It's not your fault, not really. You've just got a cousin who can be a bitch 355 days out of the year."

"Cousin?" I winced. "Do I have to be related to her?"

"Again, unfortunately. She's a Fletcher."

"Of course she is." Someone was out to get me, or at least ruin my life before I could figure what I wanted to do with it.

Miss Cooper walked back into the room. "Where's Morgan?"

Jack grinned at me before turning to face her. "I think she had a sudden conflict of interest this morning."

~ ~ ~ ~

I headed for my locker when the lunch bell rang, needing the time to myself.

I never came across Morgan during second or third period, but I still got the stares and the whispers. Whispers about why I moved back and who I was going to hang out with, and rumours that I'd punched Morgan in the nose.

If only they knew, but then they wouldn't care. The possibility of violence seemed to make the story that much more compelling.

Opening my locker, I dumped my new text books in and leaned against the closed lockers next to mine, my eyes drifting shut. Just another few hours of teenage torture and I could go home in an attempt to get away from the school's bizarre social structure.

"You think I could get into my locker?"

I opened my eyes and looked at the short Asian girl standing in front of me, her long black hair a river falling down her back. "Sure. Sorry." I moved back to stand in front of my locker, watching her open the one next to it.

"No problem." She put her books in her locker, hung up her bag, and pulled out a plastic box with chopsticks taped to the lid. She looked harmless, like any of the other Asian girls at my old school, and looked at me like she didn't know who I was. Finally. Someone who wouldn't judge me. "Long day?"

"And it's not over yet."

"It happens." The girl smiled at me as she closed her locker. "You must be the new girl everyone's whispering about."

"Probably. Sam O'Reilly."

"Evie Lee. So, what's the deal with you? You some kind of weird royalty?"

I snorted, closing my locker. "If only. No, my folks used to live here but they moved away right after I was born. My dad died a couple years ago, but my mom moved us back here just last week."

"Geez, I'm so sorry about your dad. Was he sick or something?"

"Car accident."

"That sucks. Well, maybe you'll grow to like this place, even if your current reputation is using Morgan Fletcher as a punching bag." Evie laughed when I cringed and reached out to pat my shoulder. "It's okay. She can be a total bitch some days. So, were you going to have lunch, or do you have plans with him?"

"With who?" Evie gestured to someone standing behind me, and my jaw dropped a few inches.

What was it with the hot guys at this school? This one had brown hair like Jack's, but shorter and lighter. His blue eyes were hard to ignore, richly coloured, and his clothes, while just a sweater and jeans, looked like they cost more than Mom's car.

It was like I'd met guys from either end of the spectrum. Jack fit in the guy next door category, the type that wore normal clothes and worked hard to get good grades. This guy walked down the hall like he owned the place, or at least had access to a healthy trust fund and a very fast car.

"Gabriel O'Connor, at your service, but you can call me Gabe."

Of course. "We'll see about that, slick."

He chuckled, flashing me a grin, and took a step closer to me. "Why don't we talk over lunch? Some friends of mine heard about your little encounter with Morgan Fletcher this morning and I wanted to ask you about it."

"That's too bad, because I promised Evie I'd have lunch with her today." Reaching behind me, I pulled Evie forward, her mouth opening and closing like a shocked fish, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. "First come, first served. You know how it is."

Gabe's blue eyes turned a shade darker, but his expression stayed the same. "Too bad. Perhaps another day, Samantha."

I shrugged in an attempt to be noncommittal, and turned to walk away with Evie at my side.

Beside me, Evie looked at me with her mouth still wide open. "I can't believe you just turned down lunch with Gabe O'Connor. No girl turns down lunch with Gabe."

"Maybe I'll get a full page in the yearbook for being the first."

~ ~ ~ ~

The lunch period flew by, probably because I spent the whole thing talking to Evie. She filled me in on everything I needed to know about the school, like which staircases were faster if I was in a rush, which people to avoid because they liked to do drugs behind the gym, and that there were always whispers about something living in the woods at the edge of town.

The rest of the afternoon rushed past me, too. The rooms were the same and the whispers were still there, only now they were filled with my name, Jack's, and Gabe's.

I could see it coming, rumours of a love triangle involving the three of us because Jack was from one family, Gabe from another, and me caught in the middle, somehow drawn to both of them.

What a cliché.

Jack seemed nice, and sure he was hot, but I'd had some hot guy friends at my old school. They asked me out a couple times, but it never worked out. It was like I had some kind of ability that made guys friends instead of boyfriends.

With Gabe, he was more like a used car salesman I wanted to avoid. He looked like a pusher, someone who wasn't going to stop until he heard a yes or got a punch in the face.

Before Dad died, he made sure I could throw a punch.